How to Find Law Journal Articles
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1. Introduction
Law journals (sometimes called law reviews) contain scholarly articles on fairly narrow legal and law related topics. Journal articles, like other types of secondary sources, can be used to better understand the law and find references to relevant primary sources (cases, statutes, regulations, etc.). They also provide in-depth legal analysis, critical perspectives on the law, and proposals for legal reform. As a result, law journal articles can be particularly useful for students working on projects for law or law-related courses.
Law journal articles can be found through five different databases accessible on the USC campus. Two of these databases contain the actual full text of the articles while the other three are periodical indexes, which mainly provide citations to the articles and classify them by topic. Both types of databases should be used, since each type has its advantages and disadvantages.
Law journal article citations usually begin with the article's author and title. This is typically followed by the volume number, journal title abbreviation, initial page number, and year to help you locate the article (e.g., 77 So. Cal. L. Rev. 123 (2003) refers to page 123 of volume 77 of the Southern California Law Review, published in 2003). Law journal title abbreviations are listed in the standard legal citation manuals (which are referenced in the USC Law Library's Guide to Legal Abbreviations and Citations).
2. Using Full-Text Periodical Databases
LexisNexis Academic
LexisNexis Academic is one of the full-text sources of law journal articles that is accessible to all USC library users. The Law Review search page on LexisNexis (which is contained in the "Search - Legal" folder) is where you can search for law review/journal articles by topic, article title, journal title, author, citation, or a combination of these categories:
- Searching by Topic:
If you are searching by topic, you can enter your key word(s) in the Search Terms box near the top of the screen. There are two searching methods:
- Terms and Connectors: This is the default searching method in which you place connectors between your terms and phrases to show the desired relationships between them in the articles. The AND connector between terms and phrases indicates that both must be in the article, while the OR connector indicates that only one of them needs to be in the article. To look for articles in which your terms or phrases appear in close proximity to each other, use one of the "within" connectors instead of the AND connector:
- w/n (within n words of, e.g., w/10, w/20, etc.)
- w/s (within the same sentence)
- w/p (within the same paragraph)
- free speech w/s school or college
This search will look for articles in which the phrase free speech appears within the same sentence as either school or college.
Example:- free speech w/p educat!
This search will look for articles in which the phrase free speech appears in the same paragraph as either educate, education, or educational.
Example:- atleast5(free speech) w/p school
This search requires that free speech appear in each article at least 5 times.
- Natural Language: This is the more basic searching method in which you merely enter your relevant terms (without connectors, commands, or special symbols) and LexisNexis retrieves the most "relevant" articles (based largely on the frequency in which your terms appear in the articles), ranked in order of relevancy.
It is recommended that you place quotation marks around exact phrases when doing a Natural Language search. You may also want to include major synonyms and alternative forms of a word in the Natural Language mode.
Example:- "free speech" school university
- Terms and Connectors: This is the default searching method in which you place connectors between your terms and phrases to show the desired relationships between them in the articles. The AND connector between terms and phrases indicates that both must be in the article, while the OR connector indicates that only one of them needs to be in the article. To look for articles in which your terms or phrases appear in close proximity to each other, use one of the "within" connectors instead of the AND connector:
- Other Ways to Search
LexisNexis Academic also allows you to search or limit your search for law journal articles by article title, journal title, author, and citation. These types of searches are illustrated and discussed below:
- Searching by Article Title: If you have a particular article in mind, you can enter your exact article title or part(s) of the title in the "Title of Article" box. You can also use this box if you wish to find articles that have certain words or combinations of words in the title. You can use connectors to link your words and phrases.
Example:- property rights and biodiversity
- Searching by Journal Title: If you have a particular article in mind, you can also enter the complete journal title or part(s) of the title in the "Title of Journal" box. Do not use abbreviations when using this box.
Example:- Southern California Law Review (instead of So. Cal. L. Rev.)
- Searching by Author: You can enter an author's complete name or part of the name in the "Author" box. Since authors sometimes use their middle initials/names and sometimes not, it may be desirable to leave out the middle initial/name and connect the first and last name with a w/3 connector to indicate that these names must appear within 3 words of each other.
Example:- christopher w/3 stone
Example:- name(christopher w/3 stone)
- Searching by Citation: If you have a complete article citation, you can enter the volume and initial page number of your article in the "Article Citation" box. You can also include the journal title abbreviation (e.g., So. Cal. L. Rev.); however, because LexisNexis does not always use the standard abbreviations for journal titles, it is usually best to include the full title in the "Title of Journal" box and only include the volume and page numbers in the "Article Citation" box. For example, if your citation is 68 So. Cal. L. Rev. 577, you may want to enter:
Title of Journal: Southern California Law Review
Article Citation: 68 and 577 - Date Restrictions: You can also restrict your search by date by choosing one of the date options from the "Specify Date" pull down menu.
HeinOnline
HeinOnline is another online source of full-text articles. This database is linked directly from the USC Law Library's Online Resources and Research Links page and like LexisNexis Academic, can be accessed throughout the USC campus. HeinOnline's Law Journal Library includes more than 1,100 law and law-related journals. Unlike LexisNexis Academic, which generally only includes articles from the past 10-20 years or so (depending on the journal), HeinOnline typically includes articles going back to the very first volumes of the journals. Also, the articles on HeinOnline are PDF images from the actual print versions, which is not the case on LexisNexis. On the other hand, HeinOnline does not offer as many searching and browsing options as LexisNexis. Also, it takes a little time (usually a year or two) for new journal issues to be added to HeinOnline due to licensing restrictions.
- Finding an Article with a Known Citation: If you have a complete article citation, you can pull up the article on HeinOnline either by browsing the alphabetical list of journal titles from the main screen or by selecting the "Citation Navigator." When entering your citation, you need to use the standard "Blue Book" citation form.
If you are unsure of the Blue Book abbreviation for the journal title, begin typing what you think is the abbreviation and a pop-up box with an alphabetical list of possible abbreviations will appear on the screen to assist you. - Searching by Keyword, Author, or Title: There are a few different types of searching on HeinOnline. All of them are accessible from the "Search" tab at the top of the screen. The screen below illustrates the field search (on the right side). The field search option allows you to search for words (individually or as a phrase) in the author, title, and/or article text fields. You can also use the "and" and "or" connectors to combine the three different components of your search.
Note that when entering an author's name as a phrase, the last name is placed in front of the first name. Also, as on LexisNexis, you can use a truncation symbol to pull up various forms of a particular word. On HeinOnline, the truncation symbol is the asterisk (e.g., ethic* will retrieve ethics, ethical, as well as ethically).
You can also run a quick search (using the box on the left side of the screen) or an advanced search (by clicking on "Advanced Search" on the left side of the screen). Both search methods allow you to use the AND and OR connectors to create more complex searches (similar to what you can do on LexisNexis). On HeinOnline, make sure you use capital letters when typing in your connectors (AND, OR, etc.), and use quotation marks around phrases (e.g., "due process").
The proximity symbol on HeinOnline is the tilde (~). Place the terms you want in close proximity in quotes, followed by the ~ symbol and the maximum number of words you wish to allow between your terms (e.g., "school desegregation"~5).
It is recommended that you take a few minutes to read through the advanced searching rules by clicking on the "View Advanced Search Syntax" link on the left side of the screen.
When you run a search on HeinOnline, your results will be ranked in order of relevancy. You can view retrieved articles in their entirety or selected pages where your term(s) appear(s).
3. Using Legal Periodical Indexes
Legal periodical indexes, unlike the full-text journal databases discussed above, are useful for identifying relevant law journal articles, but do not generally contain the full text of these articles. One reason why you may want to search periodical indexes in addition to full-text databases is that often, indexes include journals not covered by the full-text databases. Also, you may obtain better search results with the periodical indexes as a result of being able to search the subject headings that get assigned to each article title as well as the abstracts/summaries that are written for some of the articles.
There are two major periodical indexes for law journals published in the United States and other English speaking countries, LegalTrac and Index to Legal Periodicals. There is also an index for journals focused on international, comparative, and foreign law, Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals. All three of these indexes are linked from the USC Law Library's Online Resources and Research Links page and accessible throughout the USC campus.
LegalTrac
LegalTrac provides citations to articles from 1980 to the present from over 1,400 legal journals, magazines, and newspapers (including the local legal newspaper Los Angeles Daily Journal). This database also includes a limited number of full-text articles.
LegalTrac includes a number of searching options. The "Basic Search" page allows you to search for words in the "Subject" (i.e., the subject headings assigned to each article), by "Keyword" (which includes words in the title, author, subject heading, introductory text, and abstract fields), or in the "Entire document." Usually, it is best to begin with a keyword search. Place quote marks around your exact phrases. You can use the AND or OR connector between two words or phrases to specify that both or either need to be in each record. You can also use more than one connector in the same search (as shown below). Use the asterisk (*) to pull up multiple versions of a root word.
Once you run a search and find some relevant records, you can browse through the subject headings assigned to those records (under the heading "Related Subjects" on the left side of the screen) and see if any of them closely match your research interest. You can then run a subject search by merely clicking on one of those headings.
The "Subject Guide Search" option allows you to search for subject headings by keyword. If you enter a series of words or phrases, you will obtain a list of all of the subject headings that contain those words/phrases. The list will also include links to each subject headings' subdivisions (which you can choose to narrow your results) and related subjects (to help you identify other potentially relevant subject headings). When you click on one of the subject headings, you will retrieve records for the articles that have been assigned that heading.
The "Advanced Search" page provides additional searching options, such as being able to restrict certain words or phrases to specific fields (e.g., the author field, title field, etc.).
For additional guidance on how to search on LegalTrac, click on the "Help" link near the top of the screen.
Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP)
Unlike LegalTrac, which includes legal newspapers and practice oriented periodicals, Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP) is limited to the more scholarly legal periodicals. While ILP indexes fewer periodicals than LegalTrac however, it goes back earlier in time. ILP really consists of two different databases: a current database that indexes articles from 1981 to the present ("Legal Periodicals Full Text") as well as a retrospective database covering the time period 1918-1981 ("Legal Periodicals Retro"). While the full text database does include select full-text articles and/or abstracts from 1994 to the present, as with LegalTrac, most of the article records only include citation information and subject headings.
Like LegalTrac, ILP offers both a "Basic Search" as well as an "Advanced Search" option. The search operators described above for LegalTrac (AND and OR connectors, quote marks, and the asterisk for truncation) can all be used on ILP. Below is a screen from the "Advanced Search" page, showing how you can combine a title, author, and keyword search at the same time. (The "All - SmartSearch" field selected below is basically the same as the "Keyword" field, except that SmartSearch automatically looks for different endings of a root word, so the * symbol is not needed.)
As on LegalTrac, after you run your initial search, you can look for subject headings that match your area of interest and then click on those headings to identify additional articles on those subjects.
Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals
Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) provides citations to articles published since 1985 in journals that focus on international, comparative, or foreign law.Foreign law is defined here as the laws of individual countries other than the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Coverage in IFLP is based on type of journal rather than country of publication. Therefore, international and comparative law journals published in the United States or another English-speaking country are included in this database. IFLP is solely a periodical index and does not include any full text material.
You can perform either a basic or advanced search on IFLP. For both types of searches, you can place your phrases in quotes and use the AND and OR connectors to link your various terms and phrases. Also, as with LegalTrac and ILP, you can use the * symbol to truncate your term(s). The advanced search option (shown below) also enables you to restrict one or more sets of terms to particular fields (e.g., author, title, or journal name field).
To learn more about searching techniques on IFLP, click on the "Help" link near the upper right hand corner of the screen.
